I took my first ever multi-day Avalanche Awareness class this past weekend with the Alaska Avalanche School and it was a very rewarding and challenging experience. The core of the class focused on Avalanche Rescue scenarios and protocols, snow stability and pit tests, and we ended with a day of route finding and safe travel techniques.
Practicing mutli-person burial scenerios and efficient 2-3 person shoveling techniques
Probing is much harder than one thinks...
Pit analysis and looking at the snow pack through observation of snow crystals, temperature reading and then the fun stuff, stability tests
Here is our instructor reviewing how to isolate a column with his snow saw
Sheer test to see if you can get failure by working the shovel blade forward in a very specific manner. Then we learned how to analyze the layer if , when and where we find failure.
Compression tests again done in a very specific and methodical way in order to test stability of the snow pack.
We found the week layer down approx. 30 centimeters and it was a buried surface hoar (bad stuff).
Then final day was route finding and safe skiing practices when in a group. We had beautiful weather and enjoyed ourselves as you can see from the pics. I recommend this class to anyone traveling in the back country no matter what your mode of travel...snow shoes, skis, snow machine or foot. I feel empowered, humbled and most of all thankful I have a very informed and trustworthy ski partner who is willing to go out anytime to help me continually learn about safe travel in the back country.
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